Publishing

Results from the Free Days at Amazon

Posted on May 4, 2013 Written by Diane

So, I recently offered my book for free for 5 days at Amazon. And here’s what happened.

But first, a little history lesson.

A few years ago, the term “Self-publishing” meant bad. Self-publishing was the last resort of the author who couldn’t get traction from real publishing houses in New York. It often meant you were dealing with a scam artist outfit like Publish America. (No link. Don’t even do a web search on them. They’re crap.)

Self-publishing’s bad reputation is why, when my friend Rob read my book years ago and told me to put it up on Amazon, I wouldn’t.

Uh… Oops.

In 2008 or 2009, the ways of self-publishing changed, due to one entity: Amazon. Amazon introduced the Kindle, and it introduced the Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP. It became easy to publish your book online and actually have a viable career publishing your own work, without going through New York. Not just for the Hugh Howeys and Amanda Hockings, but for lots and lots of writers. If you want to read a great thread by authors talking about how well they’re doing, read this thread started by Hugh Howey and eventually turned into an article he wrote for Salon. There are lots of writers having lots of levels of success out there.

In December 2011, as part of their bid to become THE place for authors to have their books, Amazon introduced the Kindle Digital Publishing Select program. For 90 days, you agree to make your book exclusively available digitally to Amazon (you can still offer the paperback version elsewhere), and in return Amazon offers you five days when you can offer your book for free, plus entry in the “Kindle Online Lending Library,” or KOLL, which means that people can borrow your book (if they belong to Amazon Prime and if they have a Kindle e-reader).

In early 2012, KDP Select had some tremendous effects. Authors would offer their books for free, have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of downloads, and then when the book came off of its free days, KDP would interpret the free downloads as buys and that book would pop up on the Paid book list, basically immediately becoming bestsellers. Then lots and lots of people would buy the books (for actual money), and a lot of authors started paying off their mortgages.

In March 2012, KDP changed the algorithm and free sales only counted for a fraction of a paid sale. The change was felt immediately — free books got a boost right out of the gate, but the book probably wouldn’t be as high on the charts as it would have been before the change.

Lots of authors suspect Amazon has changed the algorithms again recently, to make the transition from Free to Paid even less useful, but Amazon claims that it only changed the formula once, in March. It’s just that there are so many more books that are available for free now, the signal-to-noise ratio has made things harder.

A lot of authors on boards or mailing lists I frequent say they don’t think Select is worth the exclusivity any more — the money they make from KOLL borrows (roughly $2 per book, which is great if your book costs $2.99 or less, but it’s less money than you would get for a sale if your book costs more) doesn’t make up for the money lost on other digital bookstores, such as iTunes/iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble, because those bookstores are increasing in visibility and sales.

When the Free bonanza started and authors started talking about how much money they were making as a result, I thought they were nuts. Here’s why: I like getting ebooks, and getting ebooks for free is even better. When the Great Free Gold Rush was on, I downloaded a crap ton of books, often by authors whose names I recognized. I downloaded a huge number of books, even knowing that I wasn’t particularly interested in them right them.

I didn’t read them. I didn’t do anything with them. I stored them on my Kindle. Whenever I paid for a book, I immediately read it. The free ones could wait.

When an author made a ton of their books available for free, what I learned was: this author will eventually offer all of their books for free. If I had a lot of free books by that author, I stopped even considering buying something from them. I had a lot of ebooks on my Kindle. I could wait.

Also, a ton of those free books were just as bad as everyone said they were. Wow. I haven’t bothered going through my Kindle to clean it up but…yeah. Not good.

Now, clearly, this was not the universal experience of the authors who were offering their books. Often they found that if they offered one book for free, the sales of all their other books picked up as a result. People were downloading their books, liking what they found, and returning for more, this time with money in hand. In fact, so many authors discovered the power of giving one away for free they found a way around Amazon’s no-free restriction.

Amazon doesn’t offer the ability to set your book’s price to Free to anyone except members of KDP Select, and that’s only 5 days out of every 90. However, it also says that you can’t offer your book at other vendors for a lower price than you offer it at Amazon, and other vendors (such as iTunes/iBooks) do allow you to offer your book for free. So authors very quickly figured out how to offer their books for permafree: they would set them to a price of zero elsewhere and then get Amazon to price-match. Sometimes Amazon price-matches, sometimes it doesn’t.

The extra bonus to permafree is: Amazon crosses out the price you’ve set on Amazon and writes $0.00 below it — making it look as though the buyer is getting a particular deal that day. And people like getting deals.

In March 2013, Amazon made a huge change to the ecosystem that has sprung up around selling things on Amazon. I don’t even think all of the effects from this have been completely understood yet.

Amazon Affiliates make money by getting people to buy things at Amazon with the Affiliates’ tag attached to the URL for that thing. The customer buys, the Affiliate gets a cut of the sale for referring the customer. The fun part was, when someone went to Amazon to check out something with the Affiliates’ tag attached, that tag stayed operational for some time afterward. So if a customer went to check out a free book, and then stayed at Amazon to buy a lawnmower, the Affiliate got a cut of the sale of the non-free merchandise.

Lots of people were making bank with this system. They had sites offering links to free books on Amazon, and then customers would buy lots of other stuff that actually cost money, and the Affiliate raked in the proceeds.

Amazon said, “Yeah, enough of that crap,” and tightened the rules, hard.

Starting March 1, 2013, Associates who we determine are promoting primarily free Kindle eBooks and meet both conditions below for a given month will not be eligible for any advertising fees for that month within the Amazon Associates Program. This change will not affect advertising fees earned prior to March 1, 2013.

1. At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks

AND

2. 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links.

Sites that had invested heavily in featuring free books to their customers stopped doing so, cold. Even if they offered links to paid books, if their Affiliates tag was used to download too many free books, the Affiliate would lose all of their Affiliate money.

Offering your book for free and letting people know about it just became that much harder.

Knowing all of this, why, if I only had one book up in the Amazon bookstore, did I make You Know Who I Am free for 5 days? It wasn’t like I was going to spur anyone on to buying Book 2, which is, as of yet, not available.

Well, it’s true: offering it for free when I had more than one book available would have been a great promotion. But by the time I have multiple books up there, I’m not planning on being in KDP Select. I did it for this first 90 days so that I could learn the system. (For example, it turns out I had to tweak a few things in the ebook and re-upload the book to Amazon a couple of times. On other bookstores — Kobo, for example — you lose your entire sales history if you re-upload. Lots of authors roll their eyes at what a stupid system Kobo has.)

I know how fast I write: it’s going to take me a bit to get multiple books up on the stores. I’m not staying in Select for that long.

What do I need even more than money at this point?

I need people to read the damn thing. And beyond that, I need them to review it.

Before I put my book up, I had zero idea of how important reviews are. Reviews convince other readers someone has read that book. (Or bought that app. Or watched that movie. Whatever.) They’re absolutely necessary to get advertising through the most effective advertisers for books. One place that has phenomenal results for the books it features won’t even talk to you if you have fewer than 10 reviews. They have so many writers trying to advertise with them that they might as well get the biggest bang for their buck and pick the books that their clients are likely to buy, and it’s easiest to tell that via the reviews for the book.

If enough people downloaded my book, I was betting that some percentage of them would read it, and an even smaller percentage of those would review it. The rule of thumb someone mentioned was: 1 review for every 100 purchases. Might be a much greater ratio with free books.

When I put You Know Who I Am up for free, I advertised the sale through ebookbooster.com (which sends out your announcement to places still featuring free books, because they make their money in other ways) and I asked people on a mailing list I’m on to tweet about it. I tweeted it a couple of times.

Results: worldwide, over 5 days, I gave away 14,400 copies of the book. This is nothing compared to the results some authors have reported, but it got me into the Top 100 of Free books, and people look through that list all the time. (If your book gets into the Top Ten Free bestseller list, you’re giving away many tens of thousands of books.)

The first few days of the sale and afterward, I have gotten some of those reviews that I needed, and it was clear that the reviewers had read the book. (Priceless: A review where it’s clear the reviewer has actually read the book. Thank you thank you thank you thank you!)

The book has also sold better afterward than it did before (there’s been a rather stark contrast, in fact), although I have zero idea how people are finding it now. I’m really glad people are finding it, of course. And lots of people seem to be enjoying it enough to leave enthusiastic reviews, for which I am profoundly grateful!

One fun moment happened when I made to the top of the Women Sleuths sublist. Me and Uncle James, together again!

Pattersons small

(Just so we’re clear: to the best of my knowledge, I have no kinship to James Patterson. If I did, I would have done something to announce this relationship, such as “buy France.” I’m just happy he’s blazed the trail for having a 5-letter first name plus Patterson on the front of a book.)

So, am I going to make You Know Who I Am free again, any time soon?

No.

For one thing, I’m going to leave KDP Select in May 2013, to see if (like some, though certainly not all authors) I can make some money and get some visibility on the other bookstores. (The main ones are iTunes/iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble.) While Amazon is still the Big Kahuna for English-language authors, the other ones are coming on strong.

Although, from what I’ve read about iTunes/iBooks even before my book’s available there, I have a laundry list of changes I’d like to see them make. Let’s start with iTunes Producer, the software you need to upload your books to iTunes. I would like to start by burning this software to the ground and salting the earth afterward.

And Kobo, seriously: up the search game on your site. And make it possible for authors to change material in their books without losing their entire sales history.

If I do get into the permafree game and offer the book for free, that’ll be after I have 3 or 4 books in the Drusilla Thorne series up, and I know how long that’s going to take. That will be a while.

That interview

Posted on March 8, 2013 Written by Diane

As promised… the interview my friend Michele Montgomery ran on her Facebook page last week.

Michele: Diane… a traditional publisher has an experienced marketing team to design the novel. How does an author decide which images from the story to entice us with on the cover – knowing everyone judges a book by it?

Me: I consulted with my marketing team (which consists of: me) and said, What draws me in to investigate a book? Usually the genre (I like mystery), then the author (if I know the name), then the cover. Since this is my first book, no one’s going to know my name. I wanted a cover people would notice.

First things first: find a good cover artist.

I looked at the portfolio of a lot of artists and asked myself, “Would I pick up that book?” The artist I eventually worked with, Scarlett Rugers, had lots of books whose covers really jumped out at me. And she’s been fabulous to work with. She asked what I had in mind for the cover: styles, photos, etc. Then she read the book to pick out thematic elements.

She generated several very different possible covers, and the one that jumped out for me (and everyone I showed it to) was the one I eventually went with: an identity bracelet covered in blood. So now the reader has a mystery right away: whose bracelet is this?

Identity is a major theme in the book, so that worked out very well.

Patricia Burroughs*: I think that’s a really smart approach. Covers still matter to me, even on ebooks. Perhaps you can’t judge a book by its cover, but often with ebooks the care and thought given to a cover imply something about the care given to the writing and editing of the book.

Me: Particularly covers in thumbnail! You have to look at the covers in tiny as well.

Robert Gregory Browne**: Oh, and weighing in on the cover thing. A cover is your first impression. Don’t skimp on cover art. Don’t think you’ll just be able to whip something up in Paintshop Pro. Unless you’re a graphic designer, get a professional to handle it.

Marc Fine: I think that people do generally judge a book by its cover. I know that I do, when I’m browsing in library or bookstore.

Me: Seconding Robert Gregory Browne’s comments about covers, by the way: the cover is your first impression. Make sure it represents your book and looks professional.

Marc Reed: What is your process for naming your characters? Why Drusilla Thorne? Are they based on actual people people or randomselected from the phone book?

Me: Neither, actually — Drusilla is actually the latest of several fake names our heroine has had. The genesis of the name — and why she’s needed so many fake ones — are an integral part of how she got to be who she is now. (And how she ended up with such an over the top name says a lot about who she was when she picked it, the author said hintingly. 🙂 )

Michele Montgomery: Marc Reed… do you really think there’s a Drusilla Thorne in a phone book outside the U.K.?

Marc Reed: How would I know if Diane wasn’t in the UK at some point in time? And Thorne looks very much like Thome – which it kinda resembles on my screen because I’m overdue for an eye exam.

Robert Gregory Browne: Where do you get your ideas? If I pay you, can I have some of them? How many pages do you write per minute? How many books per week? Okay, I’m done being an asshole now. I wish you great luck with the book Diane! Tell us when and where we can buy.

Me: When I get an idea, I think, “Is this something Robert Gregory Browne would write?” If the answer is no, then I feel pretty confident I can do okay with it. If the answer’s yes, I just move on to the next idea.

You can buy the book at Amazon (so far…I decided to give Select a try for the first 90 days, to figure out what in the heck I was doing). The first day, though, I got asked if it was on the iBookstore and Nook! So it sounds like those platforms are really coming together, and I definitely want to make use of them.

Patricia Pooks Burroughs: You’re got it wrong, Rob. We’re supposed to let her pay us for OUR great ideas, write the books, and then put our names on them because the ideas are the hard part, and we always did intend to write a book someday when we have time…

Robert Gregory Browne: For $50 you can do anything you want.

Me: Well, I know THAT — this IS still America, isn’t it?

Michele Montgomery: Diane… don’t listen to Rob. I heard he’s negotiable on the 50. Just saying…

Me: No problem, Michele. I’m pretty sure that’s the first thing any of us heard about Robert.

Pamela DuMond***: Congrats on your book, Diane.

Me: Thanks! I’m having a lot of fun with this process.

Tamar Bihari: Diane, one of the most compelling elements for me was the character of Dru. Darkly sarcastic, running from her past, doing whatever she needs to to survive — and more crucially, to make sure her screwed up, brilliant little sister survives. And she’s funny, too. How did you develop her or was she just there in your head one morning when you woke up?

Me: Drusilla has been around for a long time. My master’s thesis at USC starred her, in fact. I’m always intrigued by characters, particularly females, that don’t play by other’s rules — that keeps me interested, and I hope it does other readers as well!

And one problem I’ve always had with amateur sleuth mysteries is that the amateur sleuths are always really nice, good, law-abiding people. I can understand someone like that stumbling across a dead body once. Twice makes me look at them askance, and three times has me asking the cops why they’re not checking that person out for criminal connections.

So a big part of Dru’s character is WHY she would keep getting herself into these situations, even though she (like many of us) could quite easily stay on the straight and narrow and live a comfortable life.

(On my regular Facebook page, my friend Elaine Danforth asked: “may I ask what led you to the decision to self-publish when five companies were interested in the book?”)

Me: Well, publishing is a tough gig. The book went to at least 5 different editorial meetings — I honestly don’t even remember how many at this point (although I have the emails). For whatever reason, it wasn’t “right” for them.

I got a little depressed by this.

A friend (who has been my biggest fan) told me to self-publish it after this happened and I was definitely in the “self-publishing is death!” group — one of the few times I haven’t been ahead of the tech curve. Last year I read the book again, thought “I still like this book”, and decided to put it up after a good, thorough edit.

Dave Thome: Do you have the next book(s) plotted, or are you going to make stuff up as you go?

Me: I wish I were a pantser****. I’VE TRIED, I REALLY REALLY HAVE. But I have about four novels that, when I got to the middle of them, I said, “I have ZERO idea who did it, or why.” So now I have to work the backstory and figure out the crime before I get started. Maybe doing it on the fly is a skill that I can as yet master.

I don’t think knowing ahead of time dilutes the excitement of writing it, by the way: there’s a big difference between writing in an outline “Susie did it!” and creating realistic characters and motivations that lead to the reader saying, “Of course! If I were her, I’d have done that too.”

Now, I may get to the end and discover that in fact Susie didn’t do it, Tommy did! But at least I have a plausible scenario and lots of clues that point toward Susie being the scamp. Saving me a lot of time and rewriting.

Michele Montgomery: Diane, are the rest of the novels about magic too?

Me: No, magic is in the first one because of the murder victim, magician Colin Abbott. I think Drusilla’s going to bring back her psychic act, though.

Michele Montgomery: Diane… you mentioned you worked on this at USC but, um, that was a long time ago. How many drafts did you do before you got published? Did you hire an editor too?

Me: What I worked on at USC was a script featuring Drusilla and Stevie, but otherwise completely different. (I wonder how it would read if I were to pull it out again…)

Of the book, I’d say I did four complete drafts, including this last one after Ramona DeFelice Long edited it. The original Nanowrimo version of the novel has a few things in common with this book, but it changed a LOT since then.

Pamela DuMond: Ramona DeFelice Long Edits my books too. Love her.

——————

* – author of La Desperada and winner of a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.

** – in addition to being a smart-ass, Rob is the author of lots of books and also a winner of a Nicholl Fellowship. His latest book is Trial Junkies, which is the start of a new series and indie-published.

*** – author of the Annie Graceland mysteries

**** – “Pantser” is a technical term meaning “one who writes by the seat of their pants.” Many authors swear that they start writing and everything falls into place as they discover the story. I’ve had this happen…but I’ve had the opposite happen too many times for me to feel comfortable about it. There’s nothing like getting to thirty thousand words and have zero idea where you’re going. I don’t happen to believe that outlining ruins the process of discovering your story: first, you know the general direction everything’s supposed to be headed, then your characters come to life and run riot. If things get too crazy, you can still whip out the map and say, “Albuquerque is that way.”

An interview with me

Posted on February 28, 2013 Written by Diane

My friend Michele Montgomery is going to interview me on her Facebook page tomorrow. In case you have any burning questions for me about You Know Who I Am or about me or any stuff you think I might be able to help you with (why I recently watched the first seven seasons of the TV show Supernatural, really great caramel brownie recipes, or whatever grabs your fancy.

The most important account on Twitter is obviously AvoidComments, in case that’s your question.

Nina: I love that you have footnotes for you blog post.
John Steve Adler: I reread it now that you are published. I still like it! It’s great to have so many loose...
Diane: Holy moly! I haven’t heard the term “tart noir” in a long time! I looooved Lauren...
Merz: “My main problem with amateur sleuths is always they’re always such wholesome people. How on Earth do...
Diane: 1) I’ll have to give Calibre another try for managing Collections. Do you know of a webpage with good...

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